The present invention relates to tobacco handling apparatus and more particularly to tobacco handling apparatus for transferring harvested tobacco leaves from a source to tobacco container means in preparation for support of the tobacco leaves during subsequent curing thereof.
Because of the thin, large area, irregular shape, lightweight and flaccid characteristics of tobacco leaves they have been difficult to handle mechanically and obtain any desirable uniform distribution satisfactory for racking for curing without some manual redistributing. Yet uniform distribution is essential in bulk curing of tobacco, which is otherwise adaptable to economical automatic processing, as the tobacco must be racked compactly without voids so that during bulk curing forced heated air will flow uniformly through the entire curing tobacco mass without flow concentration through voids.
Before the present invention, mechanical handling of tobacco prior to curing had evolved to the stage where tobacco leaves were mechanically harvested and loaded into trailers on combines and then transported to curing barns where the tobacco was manually removed from the trailers and loaded into racks. In some of these prior art operations the tobacco is mechanically fed into racks on combines with manual labor required to distribute the tobacco uniformly in the racks for proper bulk curing disposition.
In all of the known prior mechanical handling of tobacco into racks or trailers, the tobacco is discharged simply and directly into the trailers or racks with no control and without any significant horizontal extent to the flow. As a result, the trailers and racks have been disposed under the tobacco discharge, usually transverse thereto, and a laborer has been required to spread the tobacco outwardly from a central pile to uniformly fill the trailer or rack. In this stage of development and because of the unwieldly nature of tobacco leaves, it has not previously been considered possible to distribute tobacco leaves mechanically in an extended flow path with regulation to obtain uniform distribution into trailers or racks without manual handling.
Associated with the problem of the mechanization of the loading and distribution of tobacco in racks or other containers is the problem of indicating when a full load has been distributed, which is not a significant problem when a laborer is manually distributing the tobacco but is a problem when the system is mechanized or semi-mechanized to the extent that a laborer is not continuously observing the filling level. Also included in mechanization of such tobacco handling is the problem of closing racks or containers in a mechanical or semi-mechanical operation that facilitates closing and unloading of racks efficiently without disrupting the filling operation appreciably.
In contrast to the prior art, the present invention provides tobacco handling apparatus that includes mechanical distributing of the tobacco leaves uniformly into racks or containers in condition for subsequent bulk curing without requiring any manual redistributing, thereby enhancing the overall mechanization and providing an efficient and facile operation. Further, in conjunction with overall mechanization the present invention advantageously provides an automatic indication of full weight loading condition that facilitates controlling of the mechanical operation, and a rack closing and unloading arrangement that is efficient, facile and inexpensive to operate.